European Journal of Spatial Development-http://www.nordregio.se/EJSD/-ISSN 1650-9544-Refereed Articles Feb 2004 - no 9
Processes of Residential Differentiation in Socialist Cities
Literature review on the cases of Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw
Sampo Ruoppila
Contact details of the author: Sampo Ruoppila, Department of Social Policy, P.O. Box 18,
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland, e-mail: [email protected],
tel. +358 9 19124595, fax +358 9 19124564
European Journal of Spatial Development-http://www.nordregio.se/EJSD/-ISSN 1650-9544-Refereed Articles Feb 2004- no 9
Abstract: This paper reviews the literature on the processes of residential
differentiation in Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw during the era of state
socialism. It identifies the housing types that were part of the housing provision
regime at different periods of the socialist era, and discusses the inequalities in access
to them, examining how they affected the development of the socio-spatial pattern.
The study finds that despite the egalitarian ideology of socialism, the socialist housing
provision system produced several socio-occupational residential differentiations.
Sometimes these were the direct result of projects conducted by the public sector
itself; there were inequalities in access to public rental housing. Sometimes these were
a result of the toleration of, or support for, differentiation in co-operative and owneroccupied housing. Furthermore, the study finds that there was continuity in the
appreciation of some residential areas. Therefore, developments during socialism did
not always challenge the capitalist past, but rather actually often continued its sociospatial patterns, especially within inner city areas.
Key words: Residential differentiation, state socialism, socialist cities, housing,
housing policy
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1. Introduction
This paper analyses the processes of residential differentiation in socialist cities
focussing on housing provision during different periods of state socialism, available
housing types (looking for tenure, building characteristics and location), inequalities
in access, and the effects on the development of the socio-spatial pattern. The cases
included in the literature review are Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw.
Obviously, these cities are different in many historical and cultural aspects, and there
were also great disparities in the physical conditions in which the cities faced the
socialist era. Yet, during the state socialist era the socialist ideology, the political and
economic system under which these cities developed, brought about similarities in
their development processes as well as similarities in terms of outcomes.
Social equality and the elimination of capitalist class-based segregation have been
considered as important aims in developing socialist cities, i.e. cities that developed
under communism or state socialism (French and Hamilton, 1979; Bater, 1980;
Demko and Regulska, 1987). The social engineering of districts’ residential
composition was facilitated by policy that emphasised the state’s role in production,
ownership and the allocation of housing, making practically all income groups
dependent on publicly subsidised housing. Nonetheless, a number of case studies have
confirmed that residential differentiation, i.e. the uneven spatial distribution of social
groups according to socio-economic criteria, continued to exist in socialist cities.
Most of these studies have concerned the pattern of residential differentiation in a
single city at a discrete moment of the state socialist period. Less attention has
however been given to processes through which the pattern as a whole developed. The
research questions of this study, which reviews the literature on development in
Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw during the state socialist era (i.e. from the
mid-1940s until 19891), concern issues such as, what were the housing types provided
during different periods of the socialist era, what were the terms of access to them,
what was their location and what implications did all of this have for the residential
differentiation.2 The depth of the study is limited by dependence mostly on English
publications, with the exception of studies in Estonian, as well as an apparent
asymmetry in how the literature covers ongoing developments in the different cities at
different periods of the state socialist era.
In relation to the debate on urban inequalities under state socialism a number of
differing positions have been identified in the literature. Early studies on socialist
cities, including those of Ian Hamilton (1979; Hamilton and Burnett, 1979; French
and Hamilton, 1979: 16-17) and Matejů et al. (1979), shared the belief that the
socialist allocation of housing succeeded in preventing residential segregation. It was
believed that housing inequalities in socialist cities were inherited from the capitalist
past. Contrary to such a view Iván Szelényi in the seminal work Urban Inequalities
under State Socialism (1983, originally in Hungarian 1972) argued that the socialist
system also created urban inequalities. Scarce goods such as new or better housing
were more likely to be given to certain groups of people, particularly those working in
‘important’ jobs, he explained. Therefore, administrative allocation did not reverse,
but simply replaced the capitalist market method of allocation as a source of urban
inequalities, Szelényi concluded. Today, scholars widely agree that both the value
given to an applicant’s labour as well as housing need were used as a criterion in the
allocation of housing (see, e.g. Węcławowicz, 1996: 78-79).
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Although it is widely believed that there was less residential differentiation under
socialism than under capitalism (Smith, 1996), interpretations of the socio-spatial
pattern of cities and the degree of inequality have differed greatly. Some researchers
have argued that urban inequalities decreased under socialism, and that the resulting
residential pattern was mosaic like (e.g. Węcławowicz, 1979 with data on Warsaw).
Others have however claimed that socio-economic differentiation was also relatively
strong in socialist cities, and that there were significant socially homogenous areas
(Dangshat, 1987; Dangshat and Blasius, 1987 with data on Warsaw; Kovács, 1994:
1087-1088 with data on Budapest; Szelényi, 1987). It has also been argued that there
was a high degree of residential differentiation in the case of high status groups and a
low degree of residential differentiation among the rest of the population (Ladanýi,
1989 with data on Budapest). Some have sought to rebuke the idea that the sociospatial pattern of socialist cities followed any standard geographical model, be it
concentric, sectoral or polycentric, instead suggesting that it actually involved
elements of all of these models (Węcławowicz, 1988 and 1996 with data on larger
Polish cities; Sýkora, 1999b with data on Prague). These empirical studies, it is
important to note, did however differ considerably in the methods and spatial scales
used. Therefore, it is difficult to conclude how much the observed differences are due
to the particular method used and how much to real differences, as Smith (1996: 97)
and Sýkora (1999a: 271) have already brought out. Given this, Smith’s (1996)
conclusion on residential differentiation in socialist cities is very general – Smith
writes:
‘The most sensible resolution would appear to be that some broad spatial
differentiation of inequality in occupational status, education, housing, certain
demographic characteristics, and (less conspicuously) income is very likely to be
found in medium-sized and large cities, but punctuated by smaller distinctive areas
differentiated by the survival of pre-revolutionary / pre-war housing, and by enclaves
of superior or inferior state housing or co-operatives. Much depends on the history of
the city in question, its pattern of (re)development, and the survival of otherwise
distinctive social areas, local communities or environments.’ (Smith, 1996: 97.)
It is easy to agree with Smith’s conclusion if one focuses on describing the sociospatial pattern – the typical viewpoint of the socio-ecological tradition. To uncover a
more profound picture, however, complementary information is needed on how and
why such a pattern emerged. Therefore, it is necessary to shift the focus to the
processes of residential differentiation and its development patterns over time.
Here the focus can be drawn to the issues of housing types and differentiated access to
them as central aspects of our analysis. This approach draws from a number of
scholars who have emphasised the importance of housing systems and housing policy
in explaining the pattern and dynamics of residential differentiation in socialist cities.
For instance, Hegedüs and Tosics (1983) argued that people had different positions in
the socialist housing system, and that there were significant inequalities of
opportunity with regard to changing ones place of residence. Musil (1987) has argued
that different housing types and tenures at different locations were constructed to
accommodate different social groups. Szelényi (1987) has taken this idea further by
arguing that inequalities in the distribution method were expressed in different spatial
patterns, because the socialist urban planning and construction system favoured the
development of large homogeneous areas at once. Węcławowicz (1996: 78) has
argued less categorically that the allocation policy had the tendencies of both the
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‘egalitarian distribution of housing conditions’ and the ‘granting privileges to certain
social and professional groups’.
The importance of housing policy is accentuated by all four of the authors discussed
in the previous paragraph, because of the primacy of the public distribution of
resources in socialist housing systems. Compared with the liberal-interventionist
tradition in the West, where ‘whatever was done had to result in the minimum of
intervention into pre-existing market processes commensurate with improving
working-class housing conditions and limited state expenditure’ (Ball, 1988: 12),
under state socialism the roles of public intervention and the market were to be
inverted. In the socialist housing model ‘the intention was’, write Hegedüs and Tosics
(1998: 139), ‘to give state regulation a dominant role and reduce the role of the
market to insignificance’. Not only did public rental housing3 enjoy a high priority
relative to other forms of tenure, but also the individual consumption of housing was
controlled, rents regulated, and strict regulation applied on other tenures too. The
construction of co-operative housing and owner-occupied flats as well as the selfconstruction of single-family housing was regulated through not only the allocation
and development of land and the giving of permission, but also through the
availability of state subsidies, loans issued only by the state banks and by the supply
of building materials produced only by state industry. What is important here however
and thus in need of more detailed examination is the fact that socialist housing
systems were not static but changing (e.g. Hegedüs and Tosics, 1996a: 22-35).
2. Processes of residential differentiation in socialist cities
The socialist era has in this paper been divided into two periods: the 1940s after WW
II and the 1950s (i.e. the Stalinist era and the period thereafter, before the reforms),
and the period from the 1960s onwards (which is subsequently subdivided when
analytically relevant). During the first period Stalinism was imported to Eastern
Europe, and the policies implemented in all of the socialist satellite states followed
rather strictly the Soviet model. During the second period, ‘separate roads to
socialism’ were allowed and there emerged increasing political and economic
differences between socialist countries, although within a similar framework.4 During
this period housing policies and modes of housing provision in various socialist cities
also underwent different forms (Hegedüs and Tosics, 1996a). Hungary and
Yugoslavia, for example, implemented reforms which introduced some market
elements to their housing systems, although under state regulation and without profitoriented commercial institutions (see, Turner et al., 1992).
The two periods differ also as to the quantity of housing investments. During the first
period investments in heavy industries were given priority in all socialist countries at
the expense of other sectors, including that of housing construction. After Stalin’s
death, priorities were reconsidered, and investments aiming to raise the standard of
living were acknowledged. It was, however, not before the 1960s when the results
could be seen on a large scale. Increasing levels of investment combined with the
modernisation and industrialisation of building methods, including the use of prefabricated elements in construction, thus characterised socialist city building
throughout these decades.
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2.1 The pre-socialist era
In general terms, the pattern of residential differentiation was similar across the four
cities on the eve of WW II. The residential districts with the highest status were
located in the core of the cities and the level of status declined gradually towards
periphery. The populations in the inner city districts were, however, relatively
heterogeneous, and the districts also differed in other ways. There were differences
between the districts, but also between main streets and side streets, between houses
lining the streets and those in the back yard, as well as between stairways in the
blocks of flats. Nevertheless, the highest concentrations of those from the lower
classes could be found in the workers’ districts on the edge of the cities. This socioecological pattern had, however, begun to alter as the wealthier population groups had
begun to leave the city centre in favour of new residential areas. These included villa
areas and garden cities such as Rózsadomb in Budapest, Střešovice, Hanspaulka and
Podolí in Prague, Nõmme and Kadriord in Tallinn, or Żoliborz in Warsaw, as well as
extensions of the inner city, such as the districts of Lipótváros and Lágymányos in
Budapest, Bubeneč and eastern parts of Vinohrady in Prague, Tõnismäe and Raua in
Tallinn, and (what is today known as ‘Old’) Mokotów in Warsaw. These ‘new’
residential areas had in fact a more homogeneous wealthy population than the
traditional high-status districts in the centres. (For a more illustrative picture of preWW II trends on residential differentiation see Lackó (1997) on Budapest or
Węcławowicz (1979) on Warsaw.)
2.2 The late 1940s and the 1950s
After the socialists had risen to power in the 1940s and until the reforms of the late
1950s, the expansion of heavy industry was given top-priority in development terms.
This prioritisation was carried out at the expense of social welfare, including the
provision of housing. Accelerated industrialisation accelerated urbanisation, but
because of the low level of housing production, housing shortages and increasing
residential densities were characteristic of the period (e.g. Bater, 1980; Hegedüs and
Tosics, 1983). The construction and distribution of dwellings in multi-family housing
was the responsibility of the public sector. The public rental housing stock also
included pre-socialist multi-family housing expropriated into public (usually state)
ownership.5 The self-construction of single-family houses was the only allowed form
of private housing development.
(a) The redistribution of inherited housing stock
Instead of the production of new housing, housing needs were at first satisfied by
redistributing existing housing resources. Redistribution concerned dwellings left
empty by those who had died in the war, emigrated or (in some countries) those who
were deported, as well as the reallocation of rooms in already inhabited dwellings.6
Scholars widely agree that redistribution decreased the level of residential
differentiation, although besides Musil’s (1968: 249-255) study, which showed that in
Prague the socio-ecological disparities between the city’s different urban zones
decreased between the years 1930 and 1950, there are few empirical studies on this
issue. However, the significance of the decrease has been questioned for three
reasons.
Firstly, the redistribution renewed inequalities to some degree. According to Hegedüs
and Tosics (1983: 475-478) in Budapest there was a ‘dual’ system of redistribution
with privileged access to old housing for the members of the administrative elite, and
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only secondary access for the rest of the population. As a result, they argue, the new
elite had occupied the best dwellings in the best locations before redistribution to the
rest of the population had even begun. Studies of the situation in Tallinn also provide
evidence of this kind of practice: residents were forced to move from their previously
selected houses in order to empty the space for the new elite (Nerman, 1996: 270;
Pullat, 1997: 210).
Secondly, the redistribution affected only part of the inherited housing stock. In most
cases the original population of the cities continued to live in their old dwellings: for
instance higher status single-family housing areas of Prague (Sýkora, 1999b: 681) and
Warsaw (Dangshat & Blasius, 1987: 175 footnote, 181, 189) continued to be occupied
by people in higher socio-occupational positions. The continuity of the ‘bourgeoisie
past’ in this way applies in particular to single-family housing (in the case of Prague
also to 2-3 family villas) as they were not expropriated and therefore could not been
redistributed.
Thirdly, there has been scepticism, in the words of Hamilton (1979b: 230), about the
significance of the ‘expropriation of ‘excess’ rooms or floors in premises belonging to
the ‘bourgeoisie’ and its reallocation to more needy families’. He argues that ‘for
much of the 1950s’ it was instead the already dense areas of the lower classes which
‘bore the brunt of population growth’ in East European socialist cities. Thus, ‘ruralurban migration and indigenous city demographic growth led both to overcrowding
and often raised in equal measure the inherited differences in housing densities
between areas’ (ibid.).
(b) New public rental dwellings
In the 1940s and the 1950s the volume of housing construction was relatively low in
each of these cities, although more was built in the cities that were extensively
damaged during WW II. The destruction was most extensive in Warsaw – its central
areas were ruined completely and altogether some 85 per cent of its housing stock was
destroyed. In Tallinn the destruction was also substantial – one half (52%) of the
housing stock was lost – but even more demanding for it’s physical development was
the accelerated urbanisation speeded up by external migration from other parts of
Soviet Union, especially Russia. The two other cities survived the war with less
physical damage. In Budapest 26 per cent of the dwellings were destroyed (Hegedüs
and Tosics, 1996b), but in Prague losses were limited to one accidental blitz by the
Americans who ‘mistook’ it for Dresden in bad weather. Consequently, relatively
more housing was constructed during this period in Warsaw and Tallinn than in
Budapest and Prague. Until the late 1950s the tenure in all new multi-family
dwellings was public rental (excluding Hungary where the construction of cooperatives was allowed based on a piece of pre-socialist legislation that had not been
abrogated).
In Warsaw (re)construction work started right in the core of the city, and central
Warsaw was rebuilt relatively quickly. In areas other than the old town, street patterns
were changed and major spatial rearrangements were made. The style followed that of
contemporary socialist architecture (e.g. Ciborowski, 1969). Moreover, Węcławowicz
(1979) shows that a high proportion of those who inhabited Central Warsaw in 1970
were in high socio-occupational positions. He explains this to be a result of the
selective distribution of housing in the centre that favoured those in the upper
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echelons of society (ibid. 411-413).7 Dangshat and Blasius (1987: 189) suggest that
the centre was partly rebuilt with supra-standard flats. In general, however, it was not
expected that there would be significant differences in housing quality or amenities
between Warsaw’s residential districts built in the 1950s.
In the case of Tallinn, the floor plans of residential buildings reprinted in a reference
book on Estonian architecture (Eesti Arhitektuur I, 1993) do however show quality
differences between blocks of flats built in central areas and those in the outskirts.
Flats constructed in central districts were in general larger, having bigger rooms, and
better facilities such as a toilet in each flat. Some houses in the city centre were built
to exceptionally high standards, for example the so-called Professors’ House
dedicated to accommodating the professors of the recently established Tallinn
Technical University. Housing constructed in the workers’ districts such as Pelgurand
or old Lasnamäe was more modest in terms of size and facilities. Conditions were
poorest in workers’ hostels, which contrary to their idea of being a temporary shelter
remained the primary dwellings for some for a considerable period of time (Nerman,
1998).
Among the first migrants to Estonia, from the rest of Soviet Union and especially
from Russia, were many members of a new administrative, military and intellectual
elite loyal to the Soviet Union (Raun, 1989; Tammaru, 1999). It is evident that many
of these people settled in Tallinn’s new central districts.
In Budapest and Prague the construction of new flats started only in the 1950s and
was less connected with the housing needs of the upper echelons of society. Thus
according to Musil (1987:33) in Prague the 1950s housing estates were ‘mainly
settled by manual workers and by employees in the basic public services (education,
health care, public transport etc.)’. In Budapest, post-WWII housing developments
commenced only in 1953 (Ferkai, 1997: 19). Some good quality flats were built in
central locations (ibid.) but characteristic of the late 1950s was the construction of
very small flats, following a political decision to raise the quantity of new dwellings at
quality’s expense. In the distribution of these flats too, those in higher social positions
were favoured (Hegedüs & Tosics, 1983: 479-480).
(c) Self-construction of single-family housing
The housing shortage and the inadequacy of funds allocated to public housing
construction was acknowledged by socialist governments, and made necessary the
development of complementary non-public forms of housing. However, until the late
1950s this consisted only of the self-construction of single-family houses. Singlefamily housing has been a neglected topic in the literature on socialist cities. Perhaps
this is due to its secondary character and small scale compared to public rental
housing projects. Furthermore, single-family housing was not considered to be a
‘problem area’ deserving of a special policy focus.
All four cities now have a large number of single-family housing projects constructed
during the socialist period. In Budapest the construction of single-family housing was
encouraged in the 1950s, forbidden for a while in the 1960s when the construction of
housing estates started, only to recover later (Hegedüs & Tosics, 1983: 482). The
outer districts of the Pest side consist largely of post-WW II single-family housing. In
Warsaw, the construction of single-family housing was forbidden within the pre-war
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administrative area, but allowed in areas annexed in 1951 and after that. Judging by
the architecture, it is clear that in the outskirts of Warsaw, little was actually
constructed in the 1950s, and it is rather during the 1970s and thereafter that singlefamily housing came to dominate. In Tallinn, the period of the 1950s and 1960s was a
time of intensive construction in respect of single family housing (Statistical Office of
Estonia, 2003: 94-95) and thus the small, plain and simple houses constructed in this
period are a common sight in the outskirts of the city.
Planning regulations and state support for private housing construction varied from
one city to another. A common method of getting a site was to separate it from an
already existing single-family housing site. New single-family housing areas were
also established and the lots were allocated administratively. Construction work on
such properties was usually carried out by the occupier with the help of their relatives,
acquaintances and, on occasion, public construction companies. State loans were
available to support self-construction in some countries.
In Central Europe the single-family housing constructed in the immediate post-WW II
decades tends locally to have a working class or lower-middle class image. Census
data on the level of education in these neighbourhoods supports this point of view
(e.g. Węcławowicz, 1979; Kovacs, 1994: 1088; Sýkora, 1999b: 682-683). Szelényi
(1983) also classifies self-help housing as workers’ housing. Only the case of Tallinn
seems to be different in this regard. There, single-family housing – that was
constructed solely by the ethnic Estonian population, not by immigrants (Org, 1988) –
was also occupied by white-collar groups in the 1950s, motivated by the popularity
that single-family housing and the garden city ideology had among the ethnic
Estonian middle classes before WW II, and given also that alternative housing choices
were restricted due to ethnic discrimination. Moreover, the survey from 1981
(Raitviir, 1990) supports the idea of the concentration of people in higher
occupational positions in Tallinn’s single-family housing areas.
2.3 From the 1960s to the 1980s
A policy initiated by Khrushchev in the Soviet Union in 1957, and followed by
leaders in other communist countries marked a turning point in housing development.
State funding for housing construction was increased and housing construction was
centralised further, including a full-scale implementation of novel industrialised
building methods such as the use of prefabricated elements. The goal was to combat
the housing shortage and to provide each nuclear family with a flat of its own.8
Housing construction increased in socialist cities in the 1960s, reaching its peak in the
1970s, and decreasing again in the 1980s following the economic recession
(Ciechocinska, 1987: 15; Tallinn arvudes, 1992; Kovács, 1994: 1083; Sýkora, 1999c:
80).
The re-introduction of co-operative housing in the late 1950s, and of owner-occupied
dwellings (flats) in Hungary in 1963, reflected the gradual divergence of housing
policies and modes of housing provision between the socialist countries.9 Cooperative housing had become the dominant form of tenure in the new dwellings in
Prague and Warsaw by the mid-1960s (Ciechocinska, 1987; Sýkora, 1998). In
Budapest, co-operative housing was less significant, but the construction of owneroccupied flats emerged instead. It resembled co-operative housing in other countries
in that they were heavily subsidised by the state, even if less than public rental
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dwellings, and that no commercial actors were involved (Hegedüs and Tosics, 1983).
In urban areas of the Soviet Union, including Tallinn, public rental housing remained
a dominant form of tenure and co-operative housing played a smaller role. The forms
of tenure in the four cities at the end of the socialist era are shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Housing characteristics in Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw in the turn of the
1990s.
Budapest (1990)
Population (m)
Prague
(1991)
2
1.2
Tallinn
(1989)
0.5
Warsaw
(1988)
1.7
Number of permanently
inhabited dwellings
775 523
495 804
157 910
Public rental
53
63
76
45
Co-operatives
10
24
14
47
Private
37
13
10
8
45
47
18
16
Tenure
(%)
Share of pre-WWII
dwellings (%)
581 454
Sources: Census data (KSH, 1992; Hegedüs and Tosics, 1996b; Sýkora, 1998; Tallinn
arvudes 1992; GUS, no year)
Regardless of their status as a non-public form of housing, housing co-operatives
could be established only under strict state approval, supervision and control, and they
were dependent on subsidies issued by the state (for details see, e.g. Sýkora, 1998).
The original aim of housing co-operatives was to increase housing construction by
persuading people with higher salaries to contribute more to their housing costs. The
housing quality in co-operatives was also higher initially, but decreased thereafter
(Ciechocinska, 1987). Nonetheless, as access to co-operative housing required a down
payment and the expenses were higher than in public rental dwellings, the
occupational positions and incomes of those living in co-operative housing tended to
be higher than of those living in the public rental sector. However, given a quirk in the
socialist housing system, all those who had better incomes did not necessarily need
co-operatives to facilitate their access to housing. In Poland, for example, college
graduates applying for public rental dwellings were given preferential treatment
during the 1970s (Dangshat and Blasius, 1987: 189).
(a) Public rental and co-operative housing in large housing estates
Most of the dwellings built in socialist cities from the 1960s onwards were located in
the large housing estates on the outskirts of these cities. The role played by the
housing estates in residential differentiation changed over time. There were also
differences between the housing estates constructed at different times and between
those that consisted of housing with different tenure patterns.
In a seminal study, Konrád and Szelényi (1969, cited in Szelényi, 1983: 5-6) showed
that contrary to the idea of socially equitable distribution in Budapest new public
rental flats in the first housing estates had been distributed to groups of a higher social
standing. In the Hungarian Housing Act of 1971 the allocation criteria for public
rental dwellings were reformulated with an emphasis on welfare aspects, including the
application of income limits. In addition, public expenditure on housing construction
was increased so that there would be more housing to distribute. As a result, as shown
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by Hegedüs (1987), the access of those in the lower strata to public rental housing
ameliorated in the 1970s. Consequently, the population structure in the new housing
estates built in the 1970s became more heterogeneous compared to those constructed
in the 1960s.
In the case of Czechoslovakia there is also some evidence that the new dwellings were
allocated more by merit than by need in the 1960s. According to Macková (1970 and
1971, cited in Szelényi, 1983: 57) skilled workers, top level bureaucrats and
intellectuals got most of the new flats in new housing estates in Czech cities in 1967,
and of all the new public rental dwellings in Czechoslovakia in 1970. However, in
recent research a consensus exists that Prague’s housing estates were largely a living
place of the ‘communist middle class’ (Sýkora, 1999b), i.e. working age people from
the broad ‘middle mass’ of the society. Matejů et al. (1979) and Musil (1987) argue
that there were more significant demographic than socio-economic differences
between Prague’s housing estates, which also speaks for relatively equal access to
housing for people in different occupations but in the same age group. As such, we
can assume that the ‘democratisation’ in the distribution of flats occurred during the
1970s in Prague as it did in Budapest. By the end of the 1970s the share of people
having high or intermediate educational degrees was slightly higher among the people
living in Czech housing estates than among the Czech urban population in general,
but this can be explained by the higher level of education prevalent among the
younger age group (Musil, 1987: 33). In Prague, housing co-operatives were mostly
located in large housing estates and were mixed with the public rental units. Thus,
socio-occupational differentiation between tenures was not spatially reflected as
differentiation across the large housing estates.
In Warsaw the housing shortage was perhaps worse than in any other Eastern
European capital city (Ciechocinska, 1987). This is reflected in a study by Dangshat
and Blasius (1987) where a crucial difference was made between those who had a
new flat and those who had not, instead of additional quality factors. Slomczynski and
Weselowski (1979, cited in Szelényi, 1983: 56) have shown that in the mid-1960s the
residents of new flats had higher than average occupational positions and incomes.
However, from Jens Dangshat’s analysis (Dangshat, 1987; Dangshat and Blasius,
1987) it can be concluded that, as in Budapest and Prague also in Warsaw, access to
housing estates became more equal in the 1970s. Whereas upper educational groups
were over-represented in most of the 1960s housing estates, the population in most of
the 1970s housing estates did not have any clear socio-economic character (ibid.).
Unlike the Czech authorities, the Polish authorities did not require the mixing of cooperatives and municipal housing, which encouraged some differentiation between
the housing estates.10
The research material from Tallinn concerning this period is limited. Raitviir (1990)
has shown that in 1981 the share of the white-collar population in Mustamäe,
Tallinn’s first large housing estate district, was slightly higher than in the two more
recently built districts. This suggests that similarly to the three other cities, in Tallinn
the distribution of flats favoured those in higher socio-occupational positions more so
in the 1960s than in the 1970s. However, for over three decades flats were constructed
mainly in housing estates, which thus became the dominant housing type in Tallinn.
Furthermore, the housing estates also became a home to virtually all groups of the
city’s working age population (Raitviir, 1990; Ruoppila and Kährik, 2003).11 As in
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Prague, also in Tallinn the majority of co-operative housing was built in housing
estates and mixed there with public rental housing.
(b) Small-scale projects of higher-quality housing
At the same time as flats in the housing estates were becoming more accessible to all
population groups (roughly from the early 1970s onwards), a new range of higherquality housing, occupied mainly by the privileged section of the population, emerged
on a smaller scale outside of the housing estates. These developments consisted of
smaller blocks of flats and modern single-family housing constructed in traditionally
prestigious areas in the inner city and villa districts or in former recreational areas.
Access to this housing stock required high socio-occupational status, connections and
high incomes. The significance of income increased along with the gradual
liberalisation of the economy, and the introduction of some elements of the market
economy as well as the widening of income differences. Towards the end of the
socialist era good housing gradually became a commodity that money could buy and
thus also became an investment opportunity.
In Hungary these developments began earlier and were greater in volume than in the
other socialist countries. This development was due to the more liberal economic
policies practiced, and also to changes in housing policy.
Hegedüs and Tosics (1983) argue that income differentiation after the economic
reforms of 1968, and increasing subsidisation of owner-occupied dwelling production
in the housing reform of 1971 signalled the turning point in Hungary. The dependence
of mobility chances on income increased, as did residential differentiation by tenure.
The private flats in Hungary were not constructed in large housing estates, but in
ecologically better locations (Hegedüs and Tosics, 1983: 489; Szelenýi and Manchin,
1987: 120-121; Ladanýi, 1993: 36). Yet another peculiarity of the Hungarian housing
system was important: tenants had a legal right to sell their tenancies of public rental
dwellings. Under conditions of general housing shortage, for those who had acquired
a public rental dwelling from housing estates this provided a way to convert public
housing subsidies into cash to partly cover the buying price (i.e. down payment for the
ownership or part of the price of the tenancy) of what was perceived as better housing:
villas as well as old and new flats in traditionally appreciated neighbourhoods. The
policy thus supported a selective intra-urban migration process. (Hegedüs and Tosics,
1983.) Ladányi’s (1989) study on Budapest in 1980 showed that the cadre elite and
the college educated were residentially differentiated from the rest of the population,
whereas in the case of other groups, the degree of differentiation was lower. The high
status areas covered the Buda side and the city centre on the Pest side. However, the
study also showed that the overall degree of residential differentiation had decreased
from 1970 to 1980. Ladányi suggests that the reason for this related to increasing
equality in access to dwellings in the housing estates as well as to the demolition of
some poor tenement areas in the inner city.
Economic reforms proceeded apace in the Hungary of the early 1980s. The
establishment of private companies was permitted, while a small entrepreneurial class
(2-5 per cent of households) had emerged by the mid-1980s (Szelényi and Manchin,
1987). Most of them were small producers of agricultural or industrial consumer
goods, though some ‘forint multimillionaires’ did emerge. The output of private
companies was, however, considered to exist only as a ‘secondary economy’,
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complementary to the official economy based on public ownership (Kornai, 1989).
Consequently, there were two groups of elites: the cadre elite with privileges based on
political power, and the economic elite with privileges based on the ownership of
capital assets (Szelényi and Manchin, 1987).
Hungarian housing policy was also profoundly reformed in 1983. As Tosics (1987)
shows the state subsidies to housing construction were reduced significantly and some
of the most subsidised housing alternatives were cancelled completely. The financial
burden increased particularly in those housing types that had initially been much
cheaper than others. The private housing sector was deregulated, and subsidies were
transferred from the supply side to the demand side. Statistics show that the output of
the private sector increased but did not offset completely the reduction in public
housing (Kovács, 1994: 1083). The privatisation of public rental housing also began,
but only a few flats were sold before 1989 (Bodnár, 1996).
On the one hand, the expansion of the private sector brought about more housing
options to those with better incomes. On the other hand, for the poor, access to
housing worsened. The German style villas and small blocks in the Buda hills
represent one extreme with respect to residential developments in 1980s Budapest.
These better than average housing units also included public rental dwellings – as
such, the cadre elite continued to use administrative allocation as a way of
guaranteeing their privileged access to good housing (Szelényi and Manchini, 1987:
120-121).
When compared to Hungary, the economic and housing reforms undertaken in the
other three countries were more limited. It is also likely that the increases in housing
inequalities were less dramatic in Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw than in Budapest. Yet
there are descriptions available of the development of superior housing outside the
housing estates, and examples of these can be given.
In the case of Prague, as Musil (1987: 34-35) notes, co-operatives were built in small
and low-rise housing complexes, and the construction of single-family housing
increased, especially in the 1980s. These types of superior housing were built in the
locations with traditionally higher status. Access to these housing units required either
high social position (e.g. top specialist, artist) or adequate financial means. The
number of these units, however, remained rather small. On such examples of this type
of accommodation are those of a small multi-family housing area from the 1970s
located next to the functionalist villas of Sídlung Baba in Prague 6, and modern single
family housing for instance in Podolí hills or in Barrandov.
In the case of Warsaw, Ciechocinska (1987: 23), Dangshat and Blasius (1987: 189)
and Smith (1996: 86) all mention up-market single-family housing as an alternative
for wealthier people. One such example being a suburban centre called Łomianki,
known for its concentration of privately owned manufacturing and agricultural farms
and also for single-family housing for entrepreneurs since the 1970s. Another
example of better-than-average multi-family housing is that of the small 1970s district
of Stawki in central Warsaw.
In Tallinn, better quality public rental housing and co-operatives (locally referred to as
‘separate projects’) were constructed in appreciated locations, primarily in the city
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centre, but also in the housing estates. The construction of single-family houses also
increased again in the late 1970s, especially in the former summer villa areas on the
northeast side of the city. The applying of modern construction technologies and
materials increased the quality, costs, and subsequently also the status of single-family
housing. The first luxurious private houses, however, appeared only at the end of
1980s, after perestroika had decreased social control, and incomes had started to
grow.
(c) Pre-socialist housing stock
The launching of massive construction programmes in the 1960s increased the intraurban migration that accelerated the population decline in the inner cities (see,
Dangshat, 1987; Pavelson, 1989a; Kovács, 1994; Sýkora and Čermák, 1998). The
problems with overcrowding eased, and the number of shared flats started to decrease.
The physical deterioration of the buildings, however, emerged as a significant
problem as the renovation of the pre-socialist inner city housing stock was
systematically neglected. The housing conditions were worst in the tenement
buildings originally constructed for the pre-socialist lower classes. Budapest’s inner
city districts VII, VIII and IX outside of the Great Boulevard, Prague’s Žižkov,
Warsaw’s Praga and many of Tallinn’s inner city wooden housing areas are examples
of neighbourhoods consisting largely of deteriorating housing.
Scholars widely agree that the intra-urban migration to the housing estates had a
socially degrading influence on the inner city tenement areas. Even if access to
housing estates was facilitated in the 1970s, there were always people such as the
aged population, pensioners, widows, less qualified workers or employees, criminals,
gypsies (in the case of Budapest and Prague) etc. who did not succeed in acquiring
adequate accommodation through housing distribution due to discrimination. As the
population decline continued, their presence started to give a more visible character to
these neighbourhoods. There is also evidence that vacant flats in these
neighbourhoods were distributed to low status groups, which also contributed to their
increased spatial concentration. Ladányi (1993) argues that as the filtering process
continued, some of the neighbourhoods in Budapest came to see a major
concentration of the gypsy population. In an interview Czech urban sociologist Jiři
Musil told the current author that similar ‘gypsyfication’ also occurred in Prague’s
Žižkov area. Likewise, Raitviir (1990: 30-31) and Nerman (1996: 342) note that
former prisoners were given flats in Tallinn’s deteriorating wooden housing areas.
The population also however decreased in inner city districts with better housing and
a traditionally higher status, but there the process was not combined with social
decline. The relatively high share of the population with a higher education or a high
occupational status in these districts is confirmed by various socio-ecological studies
based on the census data (e.g. Węcławowicz, 1991: 34; Kovács, 1994: 1088; Sýkora,
1999b).
It is also noteworthy that socialist cities were known for low residential mobility and
households occupying the same dwellings for a long time.12 This is also a reason why
some authors emphasised the demographic differentiation of residential areas more
than the socio-economic one (e.g. Matejů et al., 1979; Ciechocinska, 1987). The
secondary housing market has been studied only in Hungary, where the rights to
public rental flats could be legally bought and sold. Hegedüs and Tosics (1983) have
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noted that people with higher social standing tended to relocate to high status areas,
including old dwellings. In other socialist countries public rental flats could only be
exchanged; the financial compensation for a larger size or better location was made
unofficially. The process was bureaucratic and uneasy, and it remained secondary to
the official distribution of housing. In all socialist countries old public rental
dwellings could also be occupied after inheritance of the tenancy (see, Marcuse, 1996:
133-144) or following re-allocation carried out by the authorities (after all the former
tenants had been given a new dwelling elsewhere and the old public rental dwelling
was left empty). It is therefore reasonable to assume that both exchange and
inheritance facilitated the continuity of the social structure of traditional high-status
neighbourhoods.
Conclusions
Despite the egalitarian ideology of socialism and its implementation that made large
housing estates home for virtually all strata of working households, the socialist
housing provision system also produced several socio-occupational residential
differentiations. Sometimes these were the direct result of projects conducted by the
public sector itself; there were inequalities in access to new and redistributed public
rental housing. Sometimes these were a result of tolerance or support for the
differentiation of co-operative and owner-occupied housing. All in all, good housing
in a good location was one way to grant privilege in socialist societies (Szelényi,
1983). Furthermore, this study finds that there was continuity in perception of the
‘good location’, i.e. appreciation of some residential areas. Therefore, developments
did not always challenge the capitalist past, but rather continued its socio-spatial
patterns, especially within the inner city.
The socio-spatial patterns that the cities inherited from the pre-socialist era were
characterised by higher status residential districts in city centres, some inner city areas
and garden suburbs. The status tended to decrease from the centre towards the
periphery, and to be at there lowest in the workers’ districts near to the manufacturing
districts.
The developments of the 1940s and the 1950s (i.e. before the construction of the large
housing estates began) maintained the centre-periphery dichotomy. The new
administrative elite was granted privileged access to high-quality housing in the better
locations, thus it replaced and/or complemented the remaining members of the old
elite in the high status districts. New housing in central locations, built in the cities
that were severely damaged during the war were also more accessible for the new
elite than for the ordinary people. The new districts in outer areas, on the other hand,
provided for the needs of the average in-migrating labour force. In Tallinn at least, the
quality of public rental dwellings between the central locations and the outskirts
differed. In most socialist cities the construction of single-family housing in the
outskirts has been identified within the context of workers’ self-help during this
period. In Tallinn, the construction of single-family housing was also popular among
ethnic Estonians of higher occupational standing from the beginning of the socialist
period, which can be interpreted as reflecting the popularity of the garden city idea
among Estonian middle class households during the inter-war period.
However, despite these socialist policies maintaining some traditional differences
between the districts, it is likely that the overall level of inequality decreased during
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the 1940s and the 1950s. On the one hand this is because there were no large areas of
either newly constructed or redistributed housing that was reserved solely for the
higher strata. On the other hand, despite the inherent inequalities within it, the system
of housing redistribution most likely also decreased residential differentiation.
By the late 1950s development priorities were being re-assessed. This resulted in an
increase in public funding for housing production. An increase occurred in the number
of modern housing estates constructed in the outskirts of the four cities featured here,
following the international fashion in architecture and city planning as well as the
demands of the new industrial construction schemes. Extensive urban development
characterised the development of socialist cities during the following three decades.
People in higher socio-occupational positions were favoured in the allocation of
dwellings in the first modern housing estates of the 1960s, but by the 1970s, access
became more equal for households in all social strata. The 1970s was supposedly the
most egalitarian period of housing distribution during the era of state socialism. The
housing estates in socialist cities in general, and the high-rise housing estates
constructed since the 1970s in particular, became the home of people from virtually
all strata of working-age households. In the 1980s, the volume of housing production
decreased following the economic recession. The broad residential differentiation
between the housing estates was related to the time of their construction, tenure and
local factors.
Concurrently with the extensive construction of housing estates in the outskirts, a
smaller amount of public rental, co-operative and owner-occupied housing units were
erected in appreciated locations in the inner cities and in the garden suburbs. The
quality of these dwellings, usually small-scale blocks or row houses, was higher than
average and they were accessible primarily for those with high socio-occupational
status and personal connections. Another source of superior housing was to be found
in the modern and larger single-family housing stock. This was an option for those
with higher incomes, in particular after economic reforms increased entrepreneurship
and consequently also income differences. Thus simultaneously with the building of
bulky high-rises where accessibility was based more on equal opportunities, another
pattern of residential differentiation was enforced – better housing in traditionally
appreciated locations for those who were privileged or for those who had the financial
means available.
The inner city districts begun to loose their inhabitants after people started to migrate
to suburban housing estates. The differences between the districts in terms of the
socio-occupational structure of their inhabitants remained. On the one hand,
deteriorating tenement areas suffered from social decline as many average families
moved to housing estates, and left behind those who were less successful in the new
housing allocation scheme due to their old age or low social position. In some
neighbourhoods the concentration of low status groups (gypsies, former prisoners)
also increased due to the re-allocation of this deteriorating public rental housing stock
to these groups. On the other hand, the inner city districts with a higher status did not
experience social decline. Whether this was due to those who succeeded in moving
into these neighbourhoods during the socialist era through inheriting or exchanging
the tenancy rights of public rental housing is not known. The secondary housing
market was the most viable in Hungary and there it supported the continuity of the
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high status districts. In Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw the bureaucratic difficulty of
exchanging flats probably decreased its significance as a differentiating factor as
compared to Budapest.
Most studies of residential differentiation in socialist cities have concerned the sociospatial pattern in a single city at a discrete moment in time. The processes relating to
how these patterns evolved however deserve greater attention. Further research could
add to our knowledge in this regard by studying either the role of institutions or
individual households in such processes. Firstly, studies on institutions could try to
discern more precisely how the inequalities were produced in housing distribution. If,
for instance, the developed public rental housing was in the first instance distributed
to trade unions, which then took care of further distribution to end-users, i.e.
households in a housing queue, the question remains however at what level of this
process the inequalities between the socio-occupational groups were in fact produced?
Suitable data for research such as this would be the archived documents of the
decisions made in the institutions involved in the distribution process. Furthermore,
comparative research of this kind could shed more light on dissimilarities in
residential differentiation between different socialist cities and different socialist
housing systems. Secondly, further research could be conducted on individual housing
strategies to illuminate the role that individual housing preferences, choices and
strategies had in residential differentiation under socialist housing systems. Among
the interesting questions here are, how did individual households themselves perceive
their mobility chances, and how did they reason their choices between housing types,
tenure and location? Presumably easily accessible data for such research is not readily
available, but nevertheless an attempt should be made to assemble it. A solution may
be found in the setting up of a retrospective study on people’s housing careers under
state socialism. With a survey and structured interviews the information could be still
retrieved from the people themselves13.
Research on socialist cities is not a closed topic in urban studies. Work remains to be
done in order that we can better understand and explain the impact of state socialism
on cities, including its effects on residential differentiation. It is also pertinent for our
analysis to enable us to capture the essential features of legacies, path-dependencies
and the specificities of the contemporary development of Central and Eastern
European cities.
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Notes
1
All of the countries of the ‘Eastern block’ had fallen under communist leadership by 1948. In Eastern
Central Europe the socialist period ended in 1989, in the (Former) Soviet Union only in 1991.
2
In preparing this paper I have also benefited from knowledge gained on these cities while spending
time as a visiting researcher in each, albeit after transition.
3
In socialist countries, public rental housing was a broad category that consisted of state, municipal,
employment-related and institutional rental flats, all of which were owned, financed, constructed and
distributed by state institutions, and thus subordinated to central planning.
4
It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss at length the differences between the national policies
of the Eastern European countries during the socialist period. For further information, see Schöpflin,
1986, 1993; Longworth, 1992.
5
What exactly was expropriated into public ownership varied from one socialist country to another,
though modest single-family housing was left in private ownership in all of them. In Czechoslovakia
and in Poland, at least, there were also some private landlords who managed to keep a block of flats in
their ownership. However, the division of rights and responsibilities was not favourable for the private
landlords. They were responsible for collecting rents, paying taxes out of them, and for maintaining the
house. The rents, which were always well below maintenance costs, were set by the government, with
local officials also deciding who shall be the tenants, not the landlord him/her self. (E.g. Wecławowicz
and Gaudray-Coudroy, 1998.)
6
A similar redistribution of housing was also conducted after emigration following the national revolts
in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 (Hegedüs and Tosics, 1983; Musil, 1987).
7
According to a story told by another Polish colleague, a senior geographer in the Academy of
Sciences and a connoisseur of Warsaw’s history, housing in the rebuilt old town was allocated ‘fiftyfifty’ to white-collar professionals and to lay people. According to him, this arrangement was used,
because ‘in a socialist city too obvious large scale segregation would have been hard to legitimise’.
8
The idea that nuclear families should have a flat of their own represents a general turn in Soviet
ideology on consumerism. To put it ironically, as Gronow (1997) does, suddenly the economic
competition between socialist and capitalist systems was not only about industrial productivity, as in
the Stalin era, but about the attainment of a western standard of living – or at least selected parts of it.
Hence, this was the time when refrigerators, televisions, portable radios and hi-fi sets also began their
intrusion into private homes in the socialist block. A private flat, however small, with modern
conveniences and set in a new suburb, thus became the central symbol of a new standard of living.
9
Another new tenure introduced in late 1950s was that of enterprise housing. It was used as a tool for
labour policy, i.e. to attract labour to some industries and regions. The studies do not usually tackle this
tenure separately, but rather include it in public rental or co-operative housing, depending on the way
its construction was arranged. This is also why it is excluded from my analysis as a separate tenure.
10
In terms of spatial pattern, Wecławowicz (1988) has proposed that in Polish cities the developments
in the 1970s had petrifying results on residential differentiation: ‘New housing estates situated near
areas marked by a higher socio-occupational position, acquired exactly the same features. New housing
estates, situated in less advantageous areas, in the vicinity of areas characterised by lower sociooccupational position, acquired a similar character, although the position of such estates was typically
one class above that of the neighbouring areas.’ (Ibid. 262.) In many other occasions, Wecławowicz
(e.g. 1996) has simply argued for a relatively mosaic-like pattern of residential differentiation.
11
A noteworthy example of locally divergent developments, especially during the last decade of state
socialism, is the development of Tallinn’s largest housing estate district, Lasnamäe, constructed in the
1980s as a working class biased district. After changes in the immigration policies of the Soviet Union,
Tallinn received a stream of lowly-educated Russians in the 1980s. They were employed by large
Soviet manufacturing enterprises, which had facilitated housing access via enterprise housing. Their
spatial concentration to Lasnamäe was a result of it being the location where Tallinn’s pre-fabricated
housing was concentrated in the 1980s. (Pavelson, 1989b: 22-26; Nerman, 1998.)
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12
Many authors (e.g. Ciechocinska, 1987; Musil, 1987; Wecławowicz, 1996) have described the low
mobility of socialist cities, but statistics on this phenomenon remain rather scant. According to Kovács
(1989: 93) the mobility rate in Budapest was as low as 3.5 per cent in 1985 compared with values
ranging from 6 to 12 per cent in many Western European capitals. The Habitat-World Bank data for
1990 (cited in Lee and Struyk, 1996: 657) also shows uniformly low household mobility rates for
Budapest (4.4 %), Bratislava (3.4 %) and Warsaw (2.5 %) compared with such Western European
cities as Munich (9.2 %), Paris (8.0 %) and Stockholm (13 %).
13
In practice, the most reasonable solution would be to carry out research on housing careers and
housing strategies in a post-socialist city or cities, and to extend this to cover the socialist era as well –
in case of those respondents who were old enough.
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